The Painter's Daughter Ib 1978

Lucian Freud's painting, "The Painter's Daughter Ib", captures a nude figure with oil on canvas. Freud has a real thing for flesh, doesn't he? The colours are almost brutal: pinks, browns, a sickly kind of yellow. It's like he’s trying to paint what it *feels* like to be in a body, not just what it looks like. Notice the brushstrokes; they are thick and relentless, building up the surface in layers. See how he sculpts the form with paint, especially around her knees. It's almost as if he's wrestling with the canvas. Now, look at her elbow: the way he's rendered it with those sharp, almost aggressive strokes. It's not pretty, but it's so raw and honest. And that’s what gets me about Freud. He is unflinching in his gaze. He reminds me a bit of Jenny Saville, who also has this incredible way of painting the body as something real, something messy, something human. It’s about art that is a bit scary, that forces you to confront things you might rather not see.